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JK and Isles issue: From charisma to bureaucracy
2008-04-12 10:22:32
By Ani Jozeni
Leading German sociologist Max Weber - at the very start of the 20th century - defined the difference between a newly born political or social movement, and a mature situation.
The first is characterized by a clear spirit of selflessness and idealism, readiness for sacrifice and primacy of the common good, while the second is less worried about the future, less mindful of ideals and bent on the preservation of power structures.
The first is an idealistic stage of charismatic leaders and the second is bureaucracy; hence that`s where the fourth phase team has now arrived.
The evidence is strenuous difficulties facing the leadership of President Jakaya Kikwete in view of the difficulty that the ruling party executive faced in handling the peace accord with the Civic United Front (CUF) to end the perennial Zanzibar political climate.
The virtual impasse showed how deeply the party was divided on issues of principle, failing to agree on the fact that there needs a new political dispensation in the islands so that its economy can take off. That`s not how dominant groups see it.
While it is possible that the CCM Central Committee as well as the wider National Executive Committee would have found time to discuss other agenda, it was to most observers surprising that taking up the pact became such a difficult agendum.
This was the one issue that everyone - virtually everyone, as it were - had considered to be the easiest on the agenda list, in the face of difficult issues like making a political review of the collapse of the Cabinet in February, or current EPA contentions.
If CCM can't agree about the peace pact, what can it thus agree upon?
What is emerging in the CCM policy making environment is immobilism, that there is a morbid fear of change in CCM which governs its entire outlook on issues.
Outside the fear of change, or its unpalatable nature especially for the CCM leadership and thus Government authorities in the Isles, it is hard to see what should be debated on the peace pact.
But for a party that is enmeshed in resisting change, altering the power structures in Zanzibar can prove too much of a sacrifice to task it to do.
It is possible that a constitutional crisis may unfold in relation to the issue since the party executive committee failed to wind up the issue positively, to get the Isles wing to accept the proper power-sharing deal.
Outside that solution, it now looks hard for President Jakaya Kikwete to cut the figure of a leader, let alone an inspiration, if Isles President Amani Abeid Karume puts in a veto, and he is constitutionally supposed to be a Cabinet minister! The NEC merely avoided total failure on a pact.
Indeed the virtual veto is surprising in another regard, reinforcing what now is a confirmed question of principle that the Union Government take it as a duty to protect a structure of power in Zanzibar.
Efforts by the Union president to commit the government to the rest of the world to resolve the issue have again hit a wall, as CUF will not be in the mood to accept a watered down version of the pact - precisely as in Kenya, where a `grand coalition` becomes mere involvement in Government.
Failing to get an agreement clinched at the level of the party secretariat, as if the central committee was unaware of the solution reached is surprising.
How could NEC fault its core leadership on that issue, as if it was new? What appears to be the case is that dissension in the central committee was shifted to the national executive committee, with the fact of the presidency failing to be a decisive factor.
It means that the president is incapable of exercising his mandate as party national chairman and Union president, and retains a Mainland president role, to protect allied administrators in Zanzibar. But on no account can the rules be altered...
Those wishing for decisive action on the part of the CCM leadership will miss the decisiveness of Mwalimu Nyerere in 1984 to place Isles President Aboud Jumbe in hot soup for planning a court case on the Union Government, having adopted as cause celebre the Tanganyika Law Society platform for three governments.
In the same vein, the Union presidency wasn`t supposed to stand a clear embarrassment it suffered.
Given this background about the bilateral pact, chances of decisive action in other questions more or less did not exist, for that matter the twin issues of suspicions of high level graft and orientation of the party leadership, even touching on membership.
The two issues were resolved in an administrative manner rather than principle, with the issue much less directed at `business` as with perceived misuse of position in relation to business.
The party ethics committee would handle breaches.
Many who sought that the party retains a liberal course and continue with integrating communities will be relieved by the stalemate in the radicalisation agenda.
But it may just intensify protests that little has been done, as issues are now left to the government, that is, starting with an investigation team and then Parliament, where the issues will be procedurally handled, but not in the party.
Those seeing chances of a united and enthusiastic party ready to change course will be deceived... Resolving the Isles political impasse has been a onerous test for the Union presidency, which was at the same time a test of fusion of the former ruling parties of TANU and ASP.
While each step takes time to constitute or consummate in actual fact, of changing institutions with little threat of rocking the boat too massively, the balance of forces is still very much the same, instead of a stronger Union presidency having emerged.
The Union government is tied to supporting perennial political structures in Zanzibar, condone questionable electoral practices, and fail to make it a matter of principle to arrive at a proper power-sharing pact, not involvement as an auxiliary feature of a power structure that retains a `revolutionary` ethos. Failing to change now will cost us later.
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